Dear reader!
Cryp2Gem team was honoured to host GET’s Marketing & Communication specialists — Olivier Biggs & Colby Mort, and get a chance to do a live interview with them in the open community forum in our Telegram Cryp2Gem chat on the June 10th 2021.
Lots of interesting and essential topics were covered during this live event, so we made a summary for all who could not attend the event or anyone who just wants to go through the content again. Enjoy the read and visit our group for further discussions.
GET Protocol offers a solution to problems that have been plaguing the ticketing industry for decades. Using the GET Protocol, artists, event organizers, and ticketing companies can offer their ticket buyers and fans a fair, transparent and easy ticketing experience. Their mission is to become the worldwide open-source data standard of digital rights to enter an event. With upcoming NFT Ticketing, they will revolutionise the ticketing industry.
GET team made a great series on YouTube — I suggest everyone interested to check it out — nice series of short and easy to watch videos explaining what GET Protocol is all about.
What is GET Protocol? Watch this VIDEO!
C2G has recently published a community research article about GET Protocol written by our administrator and early GET supporter, Sir Dutchie.
To be open and transparent — some of our team members are invested in GET!
For this special occasion, C2G made an infographic (picture below)showing some quick facts about the project, and an NFT tickets use case.
C2G: “A very warm welcome to GET’s Marketing & Communication specialists — Olivier Biggs & Colby Mort! Great to have you with us.
Can you give us a short introduction about yourselves and the GET Protocol?”
Colby: “Sure thing! I’ll give a little background on myself — I found out about GET Protocol in 2017 (through an AMA actually) and visited the team to get a better sense of the project — needless to say, I fell in love with the ambition and initiative and everyone on the team was (and still is) super friendly. I have a background in business, and IT so I felt that my prior experiences could help. I joined earlier this year to help Olivier with the amazing job he’s doing with Marketing and Communications, and it’s been a blast. It’s nice to be involved with something that’s making a clear difference in an industry that requires change.”
Olivier: “In short, GET Protocol is an event ticketing project that looks to improve the ticketing experience for artists, organizers and attendees through innovative tech. That obviously includes blockchain & crypto, and also some magic stuff our developers have designed themselves.
We’ve issued over 700,000 blockchain-registered mart tickets since 2016 — none of which have been scalped or used in fraud. There are tons of other benefits that we’ve developed along the way, but I’m sure we’ll get to that a little later on.”
C2G: “Could you explain why using a public blockchain is so important for the GET Protocol?”
Colby: “This is always an excellent question, and I think it comes down to the inherent problem in the current industry, which is a clear lack of trust, a clear lack of transparency and a dire need for accountability. We’ve seen time and time again classic examples of the problems many eventgoers face when it comes to traditional ticketing. From the “black box” closed-off nature of many traditional ticketeers to the scalping and weaponization of the fan and artist connection. Needless to say, there are major problems!
Therefore this ties directly into the need for a public blockchain. It’s imperative that anyone can look into the underlying flow of tickets occurring so that trust can be maintained. This, of course, opens up many benefits, primarily giving rise to an “open data standard” where all ticketing companies, event organisers can learn and improve from clearer statistics and understand who their market is, who owns these tickets.”
C2G: “Indeed makes a lot of sense. And ticketing is somewhat monopolised as well. So a game-changer is healthy and much needed!”
C2G: “As we all know, COVID hit the event industry pretty hard. How much impact did COVID have on your business?”
Olivier: “I’ll take this one. In short: Heeeeell yes. I remember very vividly being at the office and watching the press conference where the prime minister of the Netherlands announced that there would be no more public events for the foreseeable future. A bizarre moment.
Obviously, the event industry was hit soul-crushingly hard, and many people lost their jobs and their passions/outlets.
While the lack of events was a shock and bad for business (to say the least), it also gave us the space to innovate and level up our tech.
We quickly realised that our ticketing solution could be applied easily to live streams, which ended up being quite a huge business in itself. We ticketed several live streams with a viewership of more than 10K people — for some artists, these were the biggest shows they ever did.
https://www.iq-mag.net/2020/06/10000-fans-buy-tickets-for-virtual-di-rect-show/
Outside of pivot into new business cases, we also got the chance to focus on growth and make our tech more sturdy and future-proof.
This resulted in us bringing on new white-label users of our ticketing system, which helped bring our tech to new markets, specifically Italy, Germany and South Korea.
At the same time, our sales team never stopped doing their thing, and we have a huge list of new clients who can’t wait to start performing.
Long story short — we now have a solid foundation for the future and are ready to kick ass like never before.”
C2G: “Amazing to read you managed to turn something devastating for the industry into something good. Impressed!”
🟢Did you know?
GET Protocol is a fully operational protocol and has quite some traction already!
C2G: “What are the advantages of your system over that of the traditional companies dominating the current ticketing market?”
Colby: “There’s a lot to unpack with this question! I’ll try to give a top-level answer. In general, I foresee our benefits coming from many avenues. First, we’re building never seen before functionality that saves a lot of hassle, time, and money for ticketing companies. Still, these benefits echo down to event organisers and fans. For example, our white-label solution completely eradicates ticket touting whilst connecting fans and artists together through SMS. Our NFT Ticketing also gives rise to digital collectables — yet another way for engagement to occur.
Furthermore, added revenue streams and ways for event organisers to pre-finance their events give incentives that traditional ticketing companies either don’t want to or won’t build. This could honestly be discussed in incredible detail as there’s a whole host of issues with traditional ticketing, but hopefully that provides a good overview!”
C2G: “As we all know, NFT’s have been hyped the last couple of months and GET uses NFT tickets for its protocol. Could you explain a little how NFT tickets work and did the hype open interesting doors for GET Protocol as well?”
Olivier: “It’s been quite the hype, yeah! We definitely noticed a huge uptick in interest since people have been able to find us and our NFT ticketing plans quite early on in the hype cycle.
That was great to see and absolutely opened doors for us along the way. We’re seeing massive interest in our system in general, but the NFT angle has amplified this for sure.
In short, our NFT tickets open up a bunch of new benefits in terms of fan experience and cold hard revenue.
We see big opportunities in having your tickets collectables since there’s an inherent emotional value attached to them.
On top of that, NFTs allow for capturing additional profit in the secondary market sales — essentially forever. So an artist could make money off of the resale of their tickets as it goes from fan to fan. This is a game-changer and huge for the entertainment industry as a whole.”
C2G: “Can you explain in short how decentralized event financing will work? How are the event organizers selected that need pre-financing? When will it be possible for us to invest in these events — can anyone participate? And what was the origin that led to this idea? We all agree it is something novel in the crypto industry, at least!”
Colby: “Love this question! Absolutely, so this comes down to the benefit of NFTs and smart contracts — thank the lord for Vitalik and Co.
Our decentralised finance essentially allows event organisers/artists to pre-finance their events without the need for a private loan from a bank (or typically a large ticketing company). By tapping into DeFi, these organisers can bundle their tickets as an NFT “collateral” of sorts, which can be sold to NFT investors to raise capital. You can read more about the specifics in this amazing blog by our resident blockchain enthusiast and developer, Kasper.
We’ve already got some opportunities lined up. We wish we could give specific dates, but the nature of this business often comes down to NDAs and moving parts and all sorts of timelines. However, we can say that partners we’ve worked with in the past will most likely be involved. There’s a lot of buzz around this novel feature, and many event organisers and artists are very excited to try it out!
The origins of this idea came from the theatre world; it was brought to our attention that many ticketing companies can often hold event organisers hostage, with specific terms to provide investment. This decentralisation is a way of fixing this problem! We’re delighted you’re excited about the use case also.”
C2G: “We love how you anticipated the problem that was presented to you. That is the best way to start to build a solution for an existing problem! Great job.”
🟢Did you Know?
Existing ticketing companies can easily and with low costs integrate GET Protocol and change their system. Yeah, adoption is already happening.
Community (Deofex): “A lot is on the roadmap, expansion, defi, governance, decentralization. You guys suck at providing us with spoilers because you “only announce stuff when it’s ready,” and you guys are good at releasing good stuff. So instead of asking for spoilers, let me ask about your personal expectations. Without having a glass sphere: what will be the best quarter of 2021 (q1/q2/q3/q4), like when do you guys,>personally< expect that the nicest tech and biggest announcements are coming, or is the best quarter already in the past?”
Colby: “I’ll answer this one by providing a non-spoiler, fully logical answer — Q4 and the reasoning that each quarter builds upon the last; no one quarter is more important than the other in my eyes. Every step we’re taking helps build a foundation for the next, and I think we’re starting to see the fruits of that labour (or rather the labour over the last years by the team then!) We’re excited about how things are going and think you will too.”
C2G: “Why did you recently choose Polygon to mint the NFT tickets in the future? Why did you not chose to build your own chain or chose another L1 solution?”
Olivier: “It comes down to interoperability and scalability. From the early days, it has been very obvious that we will need to remain blockchain agnostic with our consumer-facing service, at least for the foreseeable future.
You simply can’t risk a client not selling their tickets due to an ETH chain congestion. (Been there, done that.)
We’ve actually been in touch with the Polygon guys for well over a year (back when they were still Matic). Their solution is a great fit for the level of scaling we want to achieve shortly, as we get to the level of selling millions of tickets a year. This allows us to be ETH compatible, which is a big plus for our NFT interoperability and other plans, including DeFi, which Colby already alluded to.”
🟢Did You Know?
Plenty of artists and event organisers are already using honest GUTS Tickets to sell GET Protocol-powered digital tickets since the founding of GUTS in 2016–150 based on the info on their blog article (yeah, counted them)!
The most attention goes to a comedian Jochem Myer who sold over 18.000 tickets on sale through GUTS and twitted about that to his 1,2M followers.
Community (Upul): “With more and more NFT projects appearing in the market, what advantages does GET Protocol’s NFT have over other NFT? What is the unique feature of GET Protocol?”
Colby: “I will say that the utility value of NFTs is really becoming further understood by giants in this world, as we’ve seen with discussions by businesses and investors outside of the NFT art realm. We believe our uniqueness comes from being the first ticketing protocol to usher in NFT Ticketing and pave the way for this technology in real events (as mentioned, 700k+ tickets and plenty more to come).”
Community (Ben Watts): “When do you think the first ticketer will really take advantage of the innovative functionality GET NFTs have to offer? What’s the most exciting use case for NFTs you’ve heard being discussed with your clients?”
Olivier: “This might take a little while to land and be rolled out fully. There are also many possibilities there that might be more or less interesting per ticketeer / industry focus.
I go back and forth personally about being more excited about the fan experience element and the event organizer benefits — especially the decentralized financing which is also done with a little NFT magic.
Probably Q3 will see some interesting variations and more examples of use cases that actually bring a lot of value to the users.
At the risk of coming across as cynical — most of what’s been put out in terms of entertainment industry NFTs to date has barely provided any added value for the end-users. I’m pretty sure we can change that.”
Community (Ben Watts): “Thanks for the answer; I’m glad to hear you’re looking to do things differently from the relatively tame applications people have undertaken so far. A second question, if allowed; when you choose the venues for demo events on GUTs (such as the O2 the other day), are they random, or are they a hint…?”
Colby: “We’re constantly giving demos worldwide — so trust us when we say that these are not being put out to tease or trick our community. That being said, demos are demos, and the extent of what it entails for future events is different for everyone. So I’d say when you see these, enjoy the process and the thought that there’s plenty in the works and who knows what is to come.”
🟢Did You Know?
NFT Ticketing will be a game-changer!
Why? All tickets being NFTs (getNFTs) offers so many advantages:
-non-custodial ownership of the ticket asset
-ends scalping & fraud
-DeFI event financing
-regulated p2p ticket trading
-allows the artist/event organizer to earn from every ticket resale
This will also bring additional GET token use case and possibly increase its demand and decrease the supply.
What about scaling and costs, you ask? GET Protocol’s NFT ticketing solution is coming to Polygon!
C2G: “Could you describe the utility of the GET token in its current form and give us a sneak peek of what is coming that gives the token more utility?”
Colby: “Absolutely — it’s the fuel! That’s the core of its use case. Each ticket that runs through the protocol requires to GET to flow. Like gas fees on Ethereum, this mechanic is hidden in the background so that end-users do not need to understand or know it even exists. They pay for their tickets in FIAT, and behind the scenes, the magic occurs. 🧙
In the future, we’re excited about the governance potential of the token in use with GET Protocol’s DAO, and we foresee ticketing companies wanting a say in this voting as it determines the direction of the protocol. We’re also finding good fits for use within the pre-financing functionality.
To re-iterate, usage of the protocol for events will give the token demand, and we’re ensuring that ways the GET token fit in do so in a manner that doesn’t impede end users but still provides all the benefits.”
C2G: “NFT Ticketing should bring another use case for GET token and possibly increase its demand and decrease the supply, right?”
Colby: “Indirectly in the sense that NFT Ticketing unlocks further capabilities, which bring in more interest from parties wanting to make use of these features, which of course, increases protocol activity resulting in further demand for the token. Of course, there could be further potential NFT uses that occur as things become further open with the DAO that we haven’t even foreseen yet!”
C2G: “Sounds great. So what will the NFT collectables represent? Tickets from the last Queen concert, for example?”
Colby: “NFT Collectibles is a huge sector — the possibilities are honestly endless (I am also biased towards art, collectables and engagement as that are personally what I very much enjoy), but to truly brainstorm potential, you could have collectables to unforgettable moments in the future, the types of nights you won’t forget and that NFT Ticket helps to immortalise! These collectables could be passed down generations or sold on a marketplace (providing further revenue options for event organisers/artists).
There could also be voting on which moments these fans want to see created into a digital collectable and so forth. That being said, right now, we’re working on our core systems for NFT Tickets and will always be open to what ticketing companies and event organisers want to see made a reality.”
C2G: “I have the impression GET Protocol is growing quickly with all the answers that have been given now. If I was looking for a new job and loved GET Protocol, where would I need to go?”
Olivier: “Your impression is correct, my friend. We are hiring heavily now, as we plan to double our team from 30 to 60 this year.
This is all across the board, as we expect to scale up our activity internationally as well hugely.
You can see a list of the current open positions here:
https://guts.recruitee.com/
If you think you can be of added value outside of the job listings posted, please reach out to me directly, and I can forward you to our HR department.”
C2G: “What verticals is GET Protocol exploring to be of added value in those areas? Is it just events or?”
Colby: “Well, in time, anything involved with ticketing is an area for us to help innovate, but our philosophy has always been to do a specific job very well, make it right for all involved and then look to other verticals. As we expand and ticketing for specific events becomes prevalent with GET Protocol, there will be opportunities for helping other sectors.
That being said, we are always on the lookout for opportunities and possibilities — be it office reservations which we already handle in some form, transportation, beach reservations, you name it!”
C2G: “How is the competition looking at what you are doing? Do they attempt to reach out?”
Olivier: “I think it’s safe to say we’re on the radar of the bigger players in the ticketing world.
The rise in blockchain utility opened their eyes, but the NFT boom has forced everyone to re-evaluate their plans.
There are clear opportunities in terms of utility and just plain old revenue that can’t be ignored. It’s great to notice that we’re being found by the bigger players in the game and getting some recognition for our efforts that way.
We’ll see what the future holds, of course, but we’re no longer the nerdy outsider trying to prove ourselves and our ideas. We’re smack dab in the middle of the action.”
C2G: “I can imagine it being a relief to get recognized. It boosts the idea you are doing something very right!”
🟢Did You Know?
According to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc, the global online event ticketing market size is expected to reach USD 67.99 billion by 2025.
Amongst the future predictions for the Ticketing Industry are building trust, digitalisation and smart ticketing!
Community (Deofex): “You said you’re hugely scaling up your activity internationally. Your monthly awesome blog already said a new ticketeer would be announced soon in America. This is a country with great possibilities. Will, the new event organizer, organize events for musical artists and comedy shows working great in the Netherlands, or will the new event organizer explore a new market to use the GET Protocol?”
Colby: “The extent of what this new white-labeller chooses to ticket is yet to be announced; we’ll provide more information when the time is right, of course!”
C2G: “What is the most heard argument from your clients when they decide to go with the GET protocol?”
Olivier: “I’m not usually in the room when this happens, but I do pick up some stuff from our business developers, so I’ll take a crack at answering this.
I think it boils down to a couple of options that get named most of all:
- No more unwanted scalping. This is an obvious one but still very unique and clearly beneficial for both the artist and fan.
- 100% relevant data. Using our system, you know exactly who holds your tickets, and you can even contact them about the performance or a special even-related occasion. Having this data allows for much better fan demographics to be formed and makes the lives of event organizers drastically easier in many ways.
- I think our innovative features and nature is also a big plus. Our clients are given access to all the cool stuff our developers create, which is a fascinating prospect for many folks.”
C2G: “That is some cool insight! It is something GET Protocol can continue to build on.”
C2G: “Could you also elaborate on some of the hurdles you encounter with acquisitions? Live Nation owns a lot of real estates where they host events. How are they affecting sales? Or is there a workaround?”
Olivier: “This depends greatly per market, but in your example, Live Nation does indeed try -very effectively- to grasp the markets they operate in any way they can, often trying to buy the entire event vertical, including venues.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t workarounds. There are countless artists and venues, and promoters who stay outside of their grasp and can do serious ticket numbers.
Also, there’s a lot of fun in taking away some power from these behemoths through decentralisation. Having hundreds of white-labellers across the globe is going to strip power away from these singular entities. At the same time, we’re coming up with all sorts of new things, such as our pre-financing DeFi feature, which peels back another layer of control.
Many people understand our mission and our rooting for us, and we have a lot of tricks up our sleeves to fulfil the mission of becoming the global data standard for ticketing.”
🟢Did You Know?
“Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique, digital items with blockchain-managed ownership. Examples include collectables, game items, digital art, event tickets, domain names, and even ownership records for physical assets. Pioneered by CryptoKitties, ERC721 was the first standard for representing non-fungible digital assets. ERC1155, pioneered by the Enjin team, brings the idea of semi-fungibility to the NFT world. There are also Non-Ethereum NFT standards being developed on EOS, Cosmos and Polkadot. Experiments in NFTs began with the emergence of coloured coins on the Bitcoin network. Rare Pepes, illustrations of the Pepe the Frog character built on the Bitcoin counterparty system, were among the first. Some of them actually sold on eBay, and a set of Rare Pepes later sold in a live auction in New York.
The first Ethereum-based NFT experiment was CryptoPunks, which consisted of 10,000 unique collectable punks, each of which has a set of unique characteristics.” (source)
Community (Deofex): “The protocol is more than selling tickets. I understood that techniques from 1 event organizer could be shared with others. A recent example is flockey which have a technique that can manage crowds, which is very cool during these Covid times. By sharing this technique with other ticket providers, you are building a real ecosystem that might attract new customers. Do you expect that current/new ticket organizers will add other technology?”
Olivier: “We’re certainly open to it and would support it where there’s an opportunity. There’s a lot of strength in setting up and sustaining the GET Protocol ecosystem, which I expect to grow rapidly!”
C2G: “What is the biggest compliment you guys got up until now? It can be anything!”
Colby: “Well, my biggest compliment to the team I had before I joined was that I loved how open and friendly the team was. I’m happy to say that it’s still that way too, everyone’s been welcome to let us know they’d like to meet up and say hello (of course, this means after COVID — stay safe all), so I’d say it’s definitely the friendliness and openness of the team.”
C2G: “Sounds like an awesome team you guys have and great chemistry — base for success!”
Colby: “It really is great chemistry!”
C2G: “Where do you see GET Protocol in 5 years? And will there be a spot reserved for Deofex?”
Olivier: “I think GET Protocol is the household name for innovative, quality ticketing across the globe in five years. We have so much to look forward to, and I’m thrilled to be sharing every step with our community.
Of which Deofex is, of course, a VIP member who has already contributed invaluable pieces of wisdom and tech along the way. I’m sure that will only continue, and hopefully, we’ll be able to work together in more official ways by then as well!”
C2G: “Olivier & Colby, thank you for joining us today. We really enjoyed this event. You have provided us with some great explanations and fascinating insights!”
Olivier: “Guys, I really want to thank you! This was honestly the best run and substantial AMA’s I’ve ever been a part of; a really great job.”
Colby: “Thanks very much for having us, and thanks to everyone for the wonderful questions. What a fantastic community this is!”
